Kamilla Nørregaard (Scientific Officer)

Morten Bache (Senior Scientific Officer)

The Natural and Technical Sciences and Interdisciplinarity (Nat-Tech) is a new grant awarding focus area within the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The objective of Nat-Tech is to catalyse natural and technical science research, particularly in fields with potential interdisciplinary application to the life and health sciences and biotechnology. We aim to reach an annual pay-out of DKK 750 million in 2023, with approximately half of this amount being offered in open competition.

The presentation will briefly introduce the Novo Nordisk Foundation, with special emphasis on the new grant giving activities within the natural and technical sciences. In the recently approved strategy for Nat-Tech there are 4 focus areas

· Nat-X: Interdisciplinarity within natural and technical sciences.

· Q-life: quantum technologies for solutions within biological and chemical systems and medicine

· Dat-mat core: fundamental and applied aspects within data science

· Tech-med: Transform tomorrow’s therapies and diagnostics and significantly progress human health and society through advances in the technical sciences and engineering technologies.

Within the interdisciplinarity theme Nat-Tech has 3 open-competition instruments: Exploratory Interdisciplinary Synergy Programme, Interdisciplinary Synergy Programme and the Postdoc Fellowships at Stanford Bio-X. These are handled by the Committee on Interdisciplinary Research (total DKK 125 million/year).

In addition, it is now possible to apply within the Nat-Tech area in the Research Infrastructure Programme, which funds establishment and maintenance of infrastructures needed to achieve excellence in research and innovation within the 3 science areas in NNF: Biomedical and Health Science Research and Applications, Life Science Research and Industrial Applications Promoting Sustainability, and Nat-Tech.

Finally, Nat-Tech has recently established its first independent committee for Natural and Technical Sciences, which handles the new NERD programme, and in the future also Project grants (3-year project grants that support important advances within a single topic or discipline). The NERD programme supports wild and creative research ideas within the natural and technical sciences, awarding up to DKK 14 million over 7 years to dedicated researchers with a small, focused team behind them.

We will give an overview of these current and upcoming open-competition calls for 2020 within Nat-Tech and adjacent areas and will also discuss strategic projects related to the focus areas shown above. Finally, we will answer questions from the audience.